Gone Away
by The Hermione Granger Fan Club
Summary: Cho is missing Cedric... (featuring an Offspring song. Won't offend people who hate Cho's guts 'cause she's 'an obstacle in the path to the One True Ship'. It may even make you do the unthinkable and- GASP!- feel badly for Cho. But I kinda doubt it)


Maybe in another life  
I could find you there  
Pulled away before your time  
I can't deal- it's so unfair!   
  
And it feels  
And it feels like  
Heaven's so far away  
And it feels  
Yeah it feels like  
The world has grown cold  
Now that you've gone away   
  
- 'Gone Away' by The Offspring  
  
Bent low over her homework in the library, she found herself scribbling the same name entwined with hers- over and over again.   
  
CEDRIC CEDRIC CEDRIC  
  
Flushing scarlet, she scrunched the paper into a ball and shoved it into her pocket, burying her head in her arms. It was barely two-thirty on a Saturday.   
  
She heaved a great shuddering sigh and closed her eyes. Pointless.   
  
Everything seemed pointless. Take the essay she was trying to complete, for example. What was the point? Slave away over a piece of parchment and a tome three times the thickness of the phone directory (for her mum was Muggle-born and she knew how to use a telephone) and for what? So they could hand you some mark on some piece of paper that said she'd done a good thing?  
  
Pointless.  
  
Then take her appearance. She knew she was pretty. She'd ALWAYS known she was pretty. She remembered being four or five and one of her female cousins (who must have been fifteen or so at the time) brushing her hair while their families laughed and clinked glasses downstairs. "You're so pretty," she'd said wistfully.  
  
Very kind, but rather plain, was her older cousin.   
  
"You're gunna be beautiful when you're a big girl," the cousin (whose name was Lai) said. "Stand up and turn around so I can see how nice you look."  
  
Tiny, elfin, giggling, she'd stood up and turned a tentative circle on the carpet of her cousin's room.   
  
"So cute," said Lai admiringly. "I'm gunna get us some Chocolate Frogs. I know where Hyun hides them."  
  
Hyun was another cousin- her older brother.   
  
"'K," she'd said, imitating the older girl's speech.  
  
She wished Lai was still alive. She didn't remember much of her... but her mum told her how she was always carting her around, hugging her, telling her how wonderful and special she was. Lai's little pet, they called her.  
  
The older cousin didn't have any little sisters and desperately wanted one. So she invested in a cute little cousin.  
  
Lai started working for the ministry when she left school. She got promotion after promotion as an undercover agent against He Who Must Not Be Named. Rather plain, but neurotically intelligent, was Lai.  
  
Then Lai slipped up. She got killed. The families grew apart after Lai left... they didn't see each other any more.  
  
Even after Lai was killed, she'd always known she was pretty. Cute pretty. Young pretty.   
  
Hogwarts had been a shock for her. She hadn't expected to be so popular. She was short- pretty, yes, but tiny for her age- and shy. She'd crept from compartment to compartment and run into a second-year boy.   
  
"Hullo," he'd said, smiling at her.   
  
"Hi," she'd whispered.   
  
"You want to come and sit with us?" he asked her, gesturing to a gaggle of other second-years.   
  
"All right."  
  
Although the other second-years had given him pained looks at inviting a first-year to sit with them, she'd just started talking in her normal way, volunteering comments...  
  
And they'd thought she was FUNNY. Nice. Smart.   
  
It was incredible. The ones who'd rolled their eyes when she'd perched herself timidly on a seat with them were now grinning and asking her questions. They were nice. She'd SO wanted to be in their house.  
  
But she'd got into Ravenclaw. She was terribly disappointed at first, but she'd just started talking with a girl who looked almost as terrified as her-  
  
And within a fortnight at this strange new school she became the single most popular first-year in the batch. And they- the popular ones who accepted her as though she'd been that way all her life- taught her to look and act the part. By the time she hit the second year she'd spent nights sitting up in her dormitory, flicking through magazines she borrowed from the older girls (her mother wouldn't let her get a subscription) and being... popular.   
  
By third year she could have passed for a very short sixth-year, she looked so grown-up, so beautiful. Just like Lai had said. She was a reserve Seeker on the Quidditch team; she was very smart and had a lot of friends. She was Ravenclaw's pride and joy.   
  
But now she tied her hair right back from her face, barely glanced at whatever clothes she hauled out of her trunk. Once she had been so weak with nighttime tears she'd put on her robes backwards and not had a clue why everyone was sniggering at her until she got to the Great Hall and the Hermione Granger girl from Gryffindor had murmured to her.  
  
She looked pale and worn out, and barely moved in her seat, propping her chin in one hand and gazing distractedly out of the window. She served more detentions for not paying attention in the first term alone than her entire time at Hogwarts before... that.   
  
In the fifth year she'd had such a crush on Cedric Diggory, acting like a very casual, platonic friend in public but being absolutely smitten with him in private. She'd hidden secret snapshots she'd bribed Colin Creevey from Gryffindor to take for her in private places around the dormitory, kissing her fingertips at bedtime and pressing them to the blurred lips of the photographic Cedric... provided he was there. She felt invincible, like springing out of her seat in the Great Hall and shrieking, "I'M WONDERFUL! I'M UNBEATABLE! I'M IN LOVE!"   
  
But she kept very quiet about it.   
  
And somehow, she became his girlfriend. This broke the hearts of several hapless males, but it couldn't be helped. It went so FAST...  
  
Well. Not really. It seemed to, though. And all too soon she was kissing him goodbye and cheering from the stands as he entered the maze. Waiting for his gallant return, with the cup or not.   
  
Waiting...  
  
Waiting...  
  
It had gone wrong. She sat, fidgeting and winding a lock of hair around an elegant finger. Then he slammed onto the ground out of thin air.   
  
She was down there, shoving her way through an ever-growing crowd until she was at the front.   
  
Her heart sped up and stopped a moment, beats blurring into a pointless broken percussion.   
  
Pointless...  
  
Then it shattered. Everything quivered in midair a moment, like a wall of water. Then it came crashing down.   
  
He was dead.  
  
And someone was screaming, it was her, she was screaming, why was she screaming, no, no, he's dead, he's not, please God, no, he can't be dead, he loves me...  
  
She couldn't cry for days after that. She just sat in her dorm room. Nobody could understand this. They tiptoed around her. She'd wanted him to hug her again and to hear his voice.   
  
She'd tried to obliterate him from her life in the holidays. Ripped up every piece of work with their names upon it, sanded away the spot on the bottom of her wooden jewellery box where she'd carved his name.  
  
She wanted him back so much.   
  
But it was pointless. Was all that popularity, all that confidence... even such a blessing? Shy.   
  
And everyone gone from her life- she'd wanted them all again, his passing opening up old wounds she'd thought had healed.   
  
She stood up from her seat and fetched her broomstick from underneath the table, stalking out. Registering the familiar disbelieving looks on the faces of boys she'd used to try and ignore. Is that her? their faces said.   
  
Down to the Quidditch pitch. It was a sunny day- the grass bent easily underneath the grungy trainers she'd jammed onto her feet that day, slicked with the remnants of the morning dew. She looked up and shaded her eyes.   
  
"Why didn't you do your essay?" she could hear her teacher saying.   
  
She'd be slumped into her chair, with barely enough energy to look up at him. "Dunno," she'd say.   
  
The others would shake their heads. Another detention.  
  
She tried to stop herself from sighing. It was pointless to worry.   
  
She swung a leg over her broomstick and kicked off, zooming over the stands with a deep sigh. And the momentary rush that Cho Chang got as she soared through the sky... for one tiny second, sixteen years old, she was young again.   
  
* * *   
  
DISCLAIMER: 'Harry Potter' and all related everything belong to a literal wizard named Joanne Rowling. Not me. So don't sue. Lai and Hyun, Cho's older cousins, are mine however and may not be used without my express permission. 'Gone Away' belongs to The Offspring, and on more than one dismal period has reduced me to tears. Brilliant song. 


End file.
